Terror is being brown, black, immigrant, non white, non straight, non cis, in a culture that will kill you for it.

These recent tragedies are not random, nor senseless. They are the product of an ethnocentric culture that assumes white and might are right. I see opportunity for solidarity across communities of color and faith in the wake of this violence. I hope that these tragic points of connection can be the impetus for new alliances across differences.

True. But the cause and effect theory justifies the end not the means. It not how they are killed but they are killed. Who are the culprits who breed violence ? they are the starters of ignition of troubles and they end up with the creation of miseries and sufferings on earth.

Terror is being wrongfully accosted and the first question asked is what you did to ‘deserve’ your treatment. It is that extra tightening of the grip on the steering wheel every time you see a patrol car in your rear view. It is being constantly haunted by the twin specters of debt and poverty all the while being told to ‘eat cake.’ It is wondering whether it is ‘safe’ to speak the truth or to be your true self. Terror is more than bombings,shootings and beatings. It is the anxiety and fear that your bombing, shooting, or beating will be unpunished or even sanctioned.

I read your post and I could barely stop myself from saying “THIS IS WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT!!” out loud at my desk at a psych office. You hit the nail in the proverbial head! Well said sister, well said!!!!

Thanks, but I’m the guy in the pic (happens all the time :D) But yeah, Most of the talking heads on the news who sponsor this ‘war on terror,’ have no idea what terror really is, and even more precious few have experienced. Terror isn’t a series of events, but instead it’s a ever-present condition that never subsides–only waxes and wanes.

Terror is when someone deliberately commits an act against someone to spread terror among a group of people that someone belongs to. It is many of those things you mention above (although not all). There are other examples as well. It is the act of the white man who shot that guard at the FRC headquarters because the guard stopped him from breaking in to shoot a number of people there because he didn’t like their politics and policies. It is the groups of black youth who have been ganging up and beating up random white people in downtown Chicago this summer.

Anyone who thinks that terrorists are black and brown, not white, is ignorant. So is anyone who thinks that they are all white and that there are no black or brown ones. Just as all races are represented in the good people of this country, so are they all represented in the black ones. The point you make that there are plenty of white ones is valid and needed to be made. But no race has a monopoly in America.

I think what differentiates terror from violence is the belief in an expectation of impunity. While acts of violence are committed admittedly committed against Caucasians by Blacks primarily because they are Caucasian, it is also true that those attacked Caucasians have no reason not to expect that those transgressions will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Nobody’s going to tell them that they were ‘asking for it,’ or question them as to what they did to ‘provoke the attack.’ The law is on their side and this is what differentiates (IMHO) between an offense and terror.

There is the additional note that when people talk about terrorism they assume groups of radical individuals and completely forget state terrorism. The US government was responsible for the genocide of Native Americans, encouraging the establishment of death squads in its client states throughout South America and Africa, slavery and the punishments required to keep it alive as an institution for so long, the bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for reasons of political rather than military necessity, the deportation of Japanese Americans and well the list goes on.
Compare the number of deaths caused by organized states over time to that of individuals, and you will realize how lop sided the balance is. Terror is almost always committed by the dominant culture and the dominant powers withing a society, not the underdogs.

I grew up in the middle east where terrorists mostly went after little children in their struggle to get what they wanted. Shooting a bus full of kindergarden kids is untenable anywhere else in the world except when done by, well you know who did it.

I was not surprized by 9/11 since I had been expecting something like it for a long time. Muslims only sought one major success to make the point that their lives are worthless even to themselves let alone to the Western powers.

A culture that stole all of the Americas from its original inhabitants respects no one who is not of their own, AKA caucasian.

” Muslims only sought one major success to make the point that their lives are worthless even to themselves”

Good job of the entire post. Sure, Muslims don’t even value our own lives, so why should anyone balk at directing violence at us? Why not bomb our countries? Why not demolish our homes? Why not discuss shootings in places of worship as if the shooting would be acceptable had it taken place in a mosque?

After all, it’s not like we care. Not like we grieve for our dead, not like we fear for our children. Heck, we’re barely even human at all, right?

great article! i agree with the notion that terrorism has been defined using an ethnocentric lens. of course, this definition includes indiscriminate acts of violence only being perpetrated by non-western peoples. the fact that the greatest purveyors of violence in the world get to control how first nation people define violence and terror is laughable.

Not only does America breed terrorists at home, but through its imperialist policies it breeds them abroad as well. America has lent financial, economic, and military support to some of the most brutal tyrants in modern history, all in the name of maintaining its hegemony. Further through its manipulation of the economies and social structures of sovereign nations paints America as terrorists to everybody except Americans intoxicated with perverted patriotism. America tends to make heroes out of some of the most villainous characters in history, often in the faces of accounts from the people they oppressed to the contrary. Columbus, Custer, Teach, Lafitte, and Sherman are a few homegrown examples. Abroad, the US has propped up dictators, oppressed local and indigenous people for the sake of corporate interests, and has acted as the enforcement arm of the moneyed interests that seek only to keep the third world beholden to the first. Sometimes it starts to look like that part of Orwell’s 1984 where nobody can easily discern between enemy and ally because the alignments change so much.

You bring up an excellent point about the terrorism terrorism we are seeing each day in our country. The unshackled right to own and carry guns has overshadowed discussion that might involve the right of another to live their life free of the fear of bodily harm for themselves and their family.

The shooting of unarmed minorities should be a travesty of justice and the call for accountability but it stands today as a divider of people in this country in a discussion on these killings being justified or not, are we giving the benefit of the doubt to the shooter (who worth noting did not give the benefit of the doubt to the one shot) and not creating a “lynch mob” (stupid term to use with the one who killed) mentality, and then, of course, the best one, did that person “deserve” it or not.

On that note, it is interesting that NOT being the killer can yield a conversation debating level of “guilt” the victim had to deserve the capital execution since there was no trial nor jury of their peers.

(In current cases, being suspended from the 11th grade for a week would have lent itself to a death penalty crime later in life anyway..so he just got what he deserved a decade or so earlier than his future anticipated court ruling.)

As horrific and widespread is the notion that a minorities death is “up for discussion” as to being important or not, is the widespread systemic bias that exists in the local level community structural, corporate HR divisions, educational systems, and houses of worship. It is not about shooting, bombings, or weapons, it is about protecting the power structure though apathy. Apathy is the biggest weapon of mass destruction we have in this country.

Theoretically, the USA could build divisions that investigates every hate crime and put the “screws” to anyone that commits them as a deterrent to violent bias The issue is that the underlying threat that supports all prejudice is “perfectly legal”, widespread, infectious and is, so far, incurable in the majority of Americans?

I have been thinking a lot about it lately. I have yet to find a community that even cares to engage in discussion about it.